EPISODE 67
Reorienting Your Internal Compass: Two Life-Changing Trans-American Adventures
In 1972, fifteen‑year‑old Cyndy Schlaepfer‑Youker had barely bicycled beyond her hometown of Ithaca, New York. In 2020, fifty‑six‑year‑old Teri M. Brown hadn’t bicycled in four decades. Neither woman fit the profile of someone poised to pedal across the United States. Yet both did, tracing remarkably similar routes nearly fifty years apart. Cyndy joined her father and three brothers on an adventure supported by a VW bus that carried the rest of their family of eight. Teri rode a tandem with her husband Bruce, towing a trailer packed with camping gear. Their experiences differed in era, equipment, and circumstance, but each discovered the same truth: crossing a continent by bicycle reshapes one’s sense of possibility. For Cyndy, the journey revealed a strength and capability she had never imagined. For Teri, it offered a way to rebuild confidence and launch a new career after a difficult period in her life. Along the way, both discovered the power of pushing beyond perceived limits, ultimately finding renewed clarity about the direction of their lives.
Episode Transcript
Cyndy: It’s something that I can look back on and know that I’m capable. I can do things that other people might think are impossible, and it gives me confidence.
Teri: You’ve ridden all that way. In my mind, it’s like I knew that’s what we were doing, but I would look at the map and it was like, how did we do that? But the other thing for me, you know, I had been in this horrible relationship, I didn’t really believe in myself anymore. We decided to go on this trip, and at the end of the trip, I said, you know what, I can do anything.
Gabriel: You just heard Cyndy Schlaepfer-Youker and Teri M. Brown reflect on the profound confidence they gained by bicycling across the United States – two journeys separated by nearly half a century, yet united by their transformative impact. Cyndy rode from Oregon to New Hampshire in the summer of 1972, at just 15 years old, traveling with her father and three brothers. Prior to her trip, she had hardly bicycled outside her hometown of Ithaca, New York. Teri pedaled from Oregon to Washington, D.C. in the summer of 2020, at age 56, riding a tandem with her husband and pulling a trailer. Prior to training for her trip, she had not bicycled for 40 years. Both summers were turbulent moments in American history – the Vietnam War dividing the nation in 1972 and the COVID-19 pandemic doing the same in remarkably similar routes, Cyndy and Teri discovered the country’s beauty and the generosity of strangers. Their stories show how crossing a continent on two wheels can send your entire life in a whole new direction.
Sandra: You’re listening to The Accidental Bicycle Tourist. In this podcast, you’ll meet people from all walks of life and learn about their most memorable bike touring experiences. This is your host, Gabriel Aldaz.
Gabriel: Hello bicycle touring enthusiasts. Welcome to an episode of The Accidental Bicycle Tourist podcast that brings together the stories of two women who crossed the United States under remarkably different yet equally compelling circumstances. In a wonderful stroke of timing, both Cyndy Schlaepfer-Youker and Teri M. Brown reached out to the show within just a few weeks of each other, making this paired episode possible. We’ll begin with Cyndy, who wrote the following: “My family rode across the country in 1972 from Florence, Oregon to Hampton Beach, New Hampshire. Family of 8, 5 rode, 3 supported. Those that rode were my father (43), 3 brothers (17, 12,12), and myself, a girl (15). The 12- year-olds rode every other day. Support vehicle was a VW van.” Now that sounds like a real adventure, so let’s get into it!
Gabriel: Cyndy, thank you for being a guest on The Accidental Bicycle Tourist podcast.
Cyndy: Glad to be here. Yeah, I was listening to your podcast and I’m like, well, maybe our story would be something the listeners would like to hear.
Gabriel: You contacted me with this story and it leads to so many questions right off the bat. I mean, a family of eight, some of you rode, some of you supported. Can you just rewind before your trip started to how this idea even came about to do this in 1972? In 1972, bicycles were not really seen in the United States as a way to do these long tours.
Cyndy: Right, so when my dad was in college, he was at Cornell University and he worked in the summer out in California and he got this idea that he would ride his bike back to school. He started in California and he rode over Cajon Pass toward Victorville, California, and he says, “And the vultures were circling.” He was running out of energy and running out of time because he had to be back to school on time.
Gabriel: Specifically, what place in California was he? Was he in the Los Angeles area?
Cyndy: Yes, he was in the Forest Service in the San Bernardino area.
Gabriel: So wait, if he was working in the San Bernardino Mountains and the vultures were circling in Victorville, he didn’t get very far before he had serious problems.
Cyndy: No. He rode toward Denver and into Nebraska and finally gave up and then took the train the rest of the way back home.
Gabriel: Okay.
Cyndy: So he’s telling us this story and he’s embellishing and we’re all soaking it up and then somebody says,”Well, we should do that. We should ride our bikes across the country as a family.” And so that’s how the seed was planted. And then I guess dad said,”Well, maybe I can.” He was 43 at the time and my older brother and sister were twins and were 16. I was was 14 and two younger brothers that were 12 and my mom, of course.
Gabriel: Well, that was a bold move on his part, I have to say.
Cyndy: Yeah.
Gabriel: And just so cool that upon hearing this, that he actually gave up, you weren’t like, “Oh, well, dad failed.” But instead, you were like, “Let’s do this!”
Cyndy: Yeah, we’d always taken adventures as a family and we’d gone hiking and camping in the White Mountains. And then as we got older out in the Rockies in Colorado, and we were all very active, you know, outdoorsy people.
Gabriel: So what were the next steps?
Cyndy: So what happened next is they planned it. They decided that my two younger brothers who were 12 would ride every other day. And my sister, who was Bound camp at the beginning of the summer and then she would join us later. And my older sister, who was 16, had just gotten her driver’s license. My mom and dad decided that she could drive the Volkswagen bus and carry the supplies and one of the younger boys, They bought the Dawes Galaxy touring bikes, which were one of the better-known bikes back in the ’70s.
Gabriel: How many people had to buy bicycles for this trip?
Cyndy: They bought four bikes.
Gabriel: Four of them.
Cyndy: Yeah. So my dad, my older brother, myself and one to share for my two younger brothers.
Gabriel: That’s all of them. You had no bikes before this.
Cyndy: We had bikes, but not touring bikes.
Gabriel: All right. So the whole family decided it needed touring bikes, all the same style.
Cyndy: Yeah. Well, my dad decided… my mom and dad decided.
Gabriel: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. You said you were outdoorsy. So I assume you had the camping gear, but you didn’t have any bicycle bags or anything. You had to buy that as well, no?
Cyndy: We bought two panniers. That’s all we used. And my older brother had the panniers on his bike. And he carried an extra tire and extra tubes. And a few tools. I don’t know exactly what tools they were, but things to make repairs on the bike.
Gabriel: And then the rest was all on the VW bus.
Cyndy: Yeah. All the camping gear was kept in the bus and the food, stuff like that.
Gabriel: What was your experience with riding bicycles? You were 15 at the time.
Cyndy: We were just like kids riding our bike. We lived up on a hill across from Cornell University and we’d ride down the hill and up to Cornell and then back again and see how fast we could come down and get into our driveway, you know, that kind of riding. Nothing really long-distance or scheduled or planned, you know, just fun stuff.
Gabriel: How did you feel about the decision to do this trip?
Cyndy: I was excited.
Gabriel: All right. Good.
Cyndy: I thought it’d be so cool. Yeah. I think we all were thinking, yeah, this will be cool.
Gabriel: That’s awesome, because again in 1972, just so uncommon, not something that your friends would have done.
Cyndy: Yeah. The touring bikes, we loaded them up in a U-Haul and drove out to Oregon, basically with very little training. We didn’t really know how to fix a flat tire or any of that kind of stuff. We just kind of just said, okay, we’re going to do this.
Gabriel: So this really is accidental bicycle tourism at the family level.
Cyndy: Yes.
Gabriel: So you get the U-Haul, you put all of the bikes in there, somebody drives the VW bus and you get to Florence, Oregon.
Cyndy: Well, we drove to Eugene, Oregon, because my dad and mom had some friends who lived there and we stayed at their house and then we drove to the coast, rode our bikes back to their house. That was the beginning of July and at that time they had the Olympic trials going on at Eugene, Oregon, the track there and we got to see the steeplechase and a couple other races, because it was July 4th at that time and so we didn’t ride on July 4th.
Gabriel: I’m just thinking now, 1972, University of Oregon had this legendary track coach. Bill Bowerman was his name.
Cyndy: It was when Steve Prefontaine was running. He’s the one I know.
Gabriel: Bill Bowerman was the legendary, demanding head track and field coach at the University of Oregon from Phil Knight, who went on to the Stanford Graduate School of Business, where he wrote a paper about high-quality, low-cost running shoes. In January 1964, Knight and Bowerman sealed a 50-50 partnership with a handshake, forming Blue Ribbon Sports. Many of you know this footwear company by its present name, Nike.
Cyndy: On our day off, on July the track, we got on our bikes and we were just riding around on the bike paths around the University and we came around this corner and we crashed into the poles that are in the middle of a sidewalk and we were like, oh, this is a good start. But nothing was wrong with our bikes so all was well.
Gabriel: How many people crashed?
Cyndy: Two of us.
Gabriel: Two!
Cyndy: It was hilarious.
Gabriel: Yeah, that’s like another one of those kilometer-zero moments. We’re off across the country. Crash.
Cyndy: Yeah.
Gabriel: But you weren’t discouraged, so that’s good.
Cyndy: No.
Gabriel: Okay, so go on then. What happened next?
Cyndy: So then we rode, We camped all along the way. We stayed over the whole course of the trip in six hotels for various reasons. The big picture numbers, 3,501 miles. We rode it in 39 days biking, seven days of rest. So we averaged like 90 miles a day.
Gabriel: That’s a lot.
Cyndy: Yeah.
Gabriel: I mean, for no training. Amazing.
Cyndy: Yeah, so we started out, our first day was till we got up to where we were doing like over 100 a day in a row.
Gabriel: And so you went basically straight east across Oregon?
Cyndy: So we went across Oregon into Three Sisters area. We did a day off near there to go to Crater Lake and did some hiking, made our way up through Idaho and took a day off there to do a Salmon River boat ride. It was sort of a tour but not really a tour and it was just our family. They took us up the river and there was a hermit up in the woods they pointed out. Different stuff like that. He stopped at this house where the only way you could get to it was either up the river or to fly in, and we did a little bit of swimming there before we headed back but I mean that was an amazing day.
Gabriel: That seems like a very remote place you got to.
Cyndy: Yeah, it was cool. As far as our bikes and our saddles, the kids that were fine with the saddles but dad was having a little problem with his sitting area and so we made our way over Lolo Pass into Missoula, Montana and he was able to get a new bike saddle then. And my mom and my two sisters that weren’t riding were with us from Eugene to Missoula and then my mom and my sister that had been at the Outward Bound camp got on a bus and went back to our house because my mom’s parents were taking care of our horses. My parents owned what my dad called a “gentleman’s farm.” We had horses, a few cattle but we didn’t do any of the haying or any of that kind of stuff. So from Missoula until we got back to New York where we were from it was just my older sister, my older brother, me, the two younger brothers and my dad.
Gabriel: In Missoula, you probably don’t remember if you went to this famous Braxton Bicycle Shop, which is the one that would be so important in the Hemistour ride.
Cyndy: Yeah, Bikecentennial and all that. I have no idea where, and you know, we were a couple years early.
Gabriel: You were there before anything had really happened in Missoula regarding Bikecentennial, because you were there in ’72.
Cyndy: Yeah.
Gabriel: It would become the headquarters, of course later on.
Cyndy: Yeah. And a part of the story that I need to tell is that you know back in that day, in ’72, there weren’t really credit cards.
Gabriel: Right.
Cyndy: So my dad had to get a letter from his bank to you know be able to present to banks along the way in order to get cash. He knew mom and my sister were going to go back to New York so he got money out of the bank and then they got on their bus and took off. After they took off he realized he still had all the money in his pocket.
Gabriel: Oh boy.
Cyndy: So my mom happened to have $20 in her pocket and some change and from Missoula, Montana to Ithaca, New York, they scraped, by but it was quite an adventure for them. They simply kept going once they realized they had no money.
Gabriel: They I thought they would turn back and get the money but they kept going.
Cyndy: Yeah, just kept going. They saved a dime so that they could call her parents when they got to Ithaca to come pick them up, at the bus station.
Gabriel: That’s a good call. It’s good to have a dime for a phone call.
Cyndy: Yeah, back then you know it cost a dime to use the phone.
Gabriel: Who was driving the bus then, after this?
Cyndy: My 16-year-old sister who turned 17 in July. She’s twins with my older brother that rode, and they turned 17 so they had just gotten their driver’s licenses.
Gabriel: If you get your driver’s license at 16, it’s some kind of like learner’s license. there’s some restrictions with the license? Aren’t you supposed to go with somebody who is an adult? Was she allowed to just do that?
Cyndy: Yeah, in New York if you took driver’s ed in high school then you could get a permit where you were allowed to drive during the day but not at night.
Gabriel: Ah okay. So that was the restriction.
Cyndy: Yeah.
Gabriel: Okay, so it was all fully legal. That’s always nice.
Cyndy: Yeah.
Gabriel: And… it’s a nice bonus.
Cyndy: So kind of our routine for the day, we would get up in the morning and we’d have box cereal and fruit and we’d usually get up and ate at around six, and then we’d start our day, start riding. And then my sister Leslie and whoever was not riding would take the tents down, make lunch, and then find us along the route. I mean, all I had to do was ride my bike, right? I know when we were riding I was always looking forward to when my sister would come along with our lunch, because then we got to stop and have a little rest while they planned the rest of the day. And then usually, when we did stop for lunch, if we were near a creek we’d put our feet in the creek and just rest a little bit. My dad and my sister would look at the map. We’d say, “How do we feel? How far can we go? Where’s a campground along the way that we can ride to?” And then ride some more. And my sister would go ahead, she’d set up camp. If there was laundry to do, she would do that. If there was grocery shopping to do, she would do that all, with my brother that wasn’t riding. And then we’d get the campground you know three or four in the afternoon, we’d swim, whatever. My sister would make dinner. We would eat, play games, card games and stuff at the table, and then go to bed and do it all over again.
Gabriel: That sounds like a pretty good schedule. It sounds like you had a rough idea, but your planning was mostly where can we get to tonight. Is that correct?
Cyndy: Yes, I mean dad had a overall route of how we would go. And you know once we got out of Idaho and into Missoula then we headed north up to Route 2, and we basically took Route 2 all the way across till we got to Michigan. One thing that sticks out was when we were riding in Lincoln, Montana, we were near the Continental Divide. It was sort of raining when we were getting to the end of our ride that day, and by the time we finished it was snowing. My sister had already set up the tents and was ready to fix dinner by the time we got in but my dad said, “I think we’ll get a hotel tonight.” So we got a hotel.
Gabriel: That was one of the few hotel nights.
Cyndy: Yeah. But we ate dinner cooking on the camp stove and dad and my sister did the dishes in the bathtub, which was kind of fun.
Gabriel: Oh wow. Okay, so yeah, you used the camp stove in the room and then you washed up in the bathtub.
Cyndy: I remember that quite clearly.
Gabriel: That’s funny.
Cyndy: The next morning we got a little later start. It had stopped snowing but there was still snow on the ground and stuff, but we rode, I don’t know how long, but not that long till we got to the top of the Continental Divide and then were heading down. One day we rode like 120 miles but I feel like 80 of those miles we coasted, because we were downhill, downhill, downhill. We did have one adventure when my older brother’s bike, the spokes came loose. We didn’t know what to do, so my dad, he took the panniers and put my younger brother on the bike with the loose spokes. My older brother rode my bike and I rode my younger brother’s bike, just so that we could get without extra weight on the rear wheel to a bike store in order to have it fixed. We only had two flat tires across the whole way.
Gabriel: No way!
Cyndy: Yeah.
Gabriel: That’s incredible.
Cyndy: Yeah, it was incredible.
Gabriel: But then, what happened if nobody knew how to change a flat?
Cyndy: We fixed it. We knew how to do it but we had never practiced.
Gabriel: All right. When the necessity was there…
Cyndy: When it came down to it, we were able to make the fix.
Gabriel: Okay, that’s good. Wow, okay. Four bicycles and all those miles, only two flat tires.
Cyndy: Yeah.
Gabriel: Generally people report a lot of tailwinds going through the Dakotas. You can make serious miles.
Cyndy: That was one of the reasons that we rode west to east was because of the prevailing winds. Those definitely helped us. Some of when you’re riding in North Dakota, you can see where you’re going to be in 12 hours. It’s so flat, and your only hill is going over the train tracks.
Gabriel: Yeah. Look out, we’re climbing! Okay, boom. Now we’re going down again.
Cyndy: One thing that stands out is you know we got to the geographic center of the United States when we were in North Dakota.
Gabriel: It can’t be the geographic center, because it’s very, very close to Canada.
Cyndy: Geographic center of North America.
Gabriel: Of North Ah, okay. You said United States.
Cyndy: Yeah, there’s a plaque. We have a picture. The center of North America in Pierce County, which is in North Dakota. It was near Rugby, North Dakota.
Gabriel: Okay.
Cyndy: The center is marked with a monument or cairn that is a pyramid-formed shape. It’s 21 feet high, six feet wide at its base. It was built across the highway, northwest of its present location. Rugby Lions Club built it. It was completed in August 1932.
Gabriel: Fascinating.
Cyndy: We didn’t have helmets back then, if you can imagine that. You just wore sneakers and cut-off jeans and, you know, whatever we had, we wore.
Gabriel: What happened when it rained? I mean, were you well equipped against rain?
Cyndy: We had raincoats, and on the day when it snowed we had leggings we could put on. The other thing is there’s no cell phones then, so if dad and Leslie had made a plan that we’re going to ride to such and such campground, we basically had to do that, because that’s where Leslie was going to be. Though if it started raining, well, that’s what we rode to.
Gabriel: Now we think of supported rides as, you can be in constant touch with the people. If there’s a change of plans, it’s no problem, but, right, 1972, you kind of had to say, okay, this is where we’re going to be or else I guess Leslie would just have to drive back and forth like, okay, they’re supposed to be on this road. It’s hard to imagine now but you had to set that point and be there.
Cyndy: Yeah. When dad planned the trip, he thought we would ride at least 80 miles every day, so 70 to 90 miles, he was looking to see where campgrounds were along there, and when the lunch got dropped off, it was a check-in, like how are we feeling? Well, the other thing that I appreciate was just the fact of being outside for that length of time without being in a building. I just love the West. I live in the West now. The mountains the scenery… I mean, we saw wild horses running while we were riding along the road and just how beautiful the country is, you know, when you were just riding along. And there wasn’t as many cars on the roads as there are today, of course, and you know, we had a few big trucks and logging trucks and stuff like that, but I was never afraid riding my bike along the road, and today I would never do it without a helmet on, and a radar light telling me a car is coming up behind me and stuff like that. And then we went through the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. One camping ground that we had to stay in was like in the middle of a city, the municipal campground and it was in Escanaba and we were in there like sardines. And it was not that long after we’d been out west camping in the mountains and around a lake and all this stuff and we were like, “This is not camping.” And it was after we’d ridden 129 miles, but they did have hot showers, so we appreciated that. The next day, when we decided not to ride that many miles because the gravel and the potholes and the pickup truck drivers and the wind, and dad was tired and he said, “Okay, tonight we’re gonna stay in a hotel.”
Gabriel: And there was much rejoicing.
Cyndy: Yeah, and there was much rejoicing.
Gabriel: You earned it.
Cyndy: It was called Dreamland Hotel. We couldn’t ride across the Mackinac bridge in Michigan. They wouldn’t allow us and we were really upset that they wouldn’t let us ride across, but they took our bikes and put them in a pickup truck and drove us across and down the coast here and then across into Ontario. And we actually rode in Ontario across to New York. We went through Buffalo, New York, and then dropped down through the Finger Lakes to Ithaca, to our house. We were there four days. It was my birthday, when I turned 16. And then we rode four more days to the coast and ended up Hampton Beach, New Hampshire.
Gabriel: Was there a reason to go specifically to Hampton Beach of all places?
Cyndy: Well, 7 and 9, just if the routes, that’s where the route goes.
Gabriel: Oh, okay.
Cyndy: The shortest route.
Gabriel: Okay. Shortest route to the coast from Ithaca.
Cyndy: The other thing about our trip is that we didn’t really tell anybody we were doing it, because my dad didn’t want to tell people we were doing it and then not do it.
Gabriel: Oh.
Cyndy: So it wasn’t until we got back to New York that we even called the local paper to come in, and we told them about the trip.
Gabriel: Based on his previous experience, he didn’t want to set expectations too high, I guess. And did the paper come out?
Cyndy: Yeah. We have a… can you can see that?
Gabriel: Yeah, yeah. Ithaca Journal. “Bicycle Trek Takes Family Coast to Coast.” There you all are.
Cyndy: There we all are, and we have a log. My dad had an odometer on his bike, and it’s one of those that goes click, click, click every time the wheel goes.
Gabriel: The old one, yeah, old style.
Cyndy: It got annoying and especially like, you’re going up a hill and it’s click, click instead of click, click, click, but that’s why we know how much we rode. We know where we stayed all along the way, because my dad kept a little journal, writing stuff like that. I do have a link to our journal if you’d like to read it.
Gabriel: Definitely, absolutely. That would be great. Is that something that we could put a link to in the show notes?
Cyndy: Yeah.
Gabriel: Okay, great. And then what about on the interpersonal side? I mean you’re a big family going through the trip, while fun, it also can cause some stressful situations, just with the biking and different people might have a slightly different pace. How did that all work out?
Cyndy: Well the first day we rode, my dad had my brother in the front and he was going faster than any of us could keep up with him, so my dad put him in the back and then my dad set the pace for the day. I followed him, my younger brother followed me, and then my brother was at the back. So that’s how we rode every day.
Gabriel: So you stayed together as a mini-peloton the whole time?
Cyndy: Yeah, it worked. My dad, he got all the headwinds when there were any, and the rest of us were just like behind him.
Gabriel: Okay, that’s incredible. And up a hill also everybody had their spot?
Cyndy: I don’t know, we just all stayed together. On the downhills sometimes some of us would go faster than my dad went, but mostly we were just all together. My sister, who was driving the bus, has some stories about my younger brothers being like, “Oh, I’m so glad I’m not riding today.” So there was some of that. One day my sister just said, “Well, I want to ride a little.” So she got on a bike and a big truck went by and she’s like, “Oh, I’m not riding.”
Gabriel: Okay.
Cyndy: But I feel like we were just kids really, like when we got off our bikes we’d go swimming, we played. St least for me, I was like, I’m glad I’m doing this, you know. It was exciting that we were doing it, you know. It was something to accomplish and feel good about and, I don’t know, it was a family thing we were doing together.
Gabriel: I mean, the fact you’re a family, it’s not really a given that it’s gonna work out, but it sounds like this trip really brought you together and everybody got along with everybody. There weren’t any major problems.
Cyndy: No, we all got along, thankfully.
Gabriel: That’s important. One more question about the trip. Did your dad share any of his emotions about it? Because he had not made it through the first time and now with the family, he made it. I know dads can sometimes be very stoic. I don’t know your dad. How was that? Did you get an insight into what it meant for him? Or was he like, “Okay, we did it. Great.”
Cyndy: Yeah, no. I mean, every time we got to a new state he was like, “We’re making progress.” Get a picture at the state line, us with our bikes and everything and then we get to the next state and like, “We’ve made progress.” You know, so that was about my dad’s emotions. I’m sure he was excited, but he was trying to hold it in because we were still on the trip.
Gabriel: Right.
Cyndy: So yeah, he wasn’t that emotional. It was the right time to do the trip. It was the summer before my older brother and sister were seniors in high school, so it was the last time really that we would be all together as a family, and I think that’s why that it was that summer that we ended up doing it, because then my older brother and sister went off to college, you know, and then it was not as often that we all got back together again, especially for trips.
Gabriel: How did it work out with each of the family members after the ride? Was anybody inspired to continue doing bicycle touring?
Cyndy: Not right away. After…
Gabriel: Fair enough.
Cyndy: Yeah, I continued to ride my bike a little bit after college. Now I ride my bike all the time now that I’m retired and I’ve been on bike tours in Europe and around the United States. And the things that are cool about it is that I’m going to places in the world that I never thought I would ever go to. But I’m about the only one that really rides my bike on a regular basis anymore. And we only have one of the bikes left. One of my younger brothers has his bike that they shared but my bike got stolen, probably 10 years after we’d ridden, and I don’t know what happened to my other brother and my dad’s bikes.
Gabriel: Any parting thoughts or reflections about what the trip meant in your life as a whole and for your family? I mean now that it’s been so long what do you have to say about the trip with 50 years of perspective?
Cyndy: It was a day-to-day thing. I think one of the things that amazes me is that we rode that many miles every day and had very little trouble. It’s something that I can look back on and know that I’m capable. I can do things that other people might think are impossible, and it gives me confidence. I know that if I start something, I can finish it. If I come up upon a challenge, sometimes I’ll just say, well, I got through that. It’s something that I tell people about because I’m proud of it, and I know it’s unique and it’s something that we did as family, and I really love my family.
Gabriel: Cyndy’s account sets the stage for Teri’s trans-American adventure. This is how she introduced her journey: “I rode a tandem bicycle from Astoria, Oregon to Washington DC in the summer of 2020. Just me and my husband pulling a trailer with our camping gear. No sag wagon! No group.” Amazing. Before jumping into Teri’s story, this is a friendly reminder that there’s still time to vote for your favorite episodes of the past year. Again, you’ll find the link to the Google Form in the show notes, on the website homepage, and on the Instagram bio.
Gabriel: Teri M. Brown, thank you for being a guest on The Accidental Bicycle Tourist podcast.
Teri: Well, thanks so much for having me. I’m super excited to be here with you today.
Gabriel: There’s a lot in there. A trailer, a tandem, 2020. Where would you like to get started? Do you want to back up a bit further?
Teri: Yeah, why don’t I kind of start with like where this whole thing came from. For 14 years I lived in an emotionally abusive relationship, and in 2017 I got out of that relationship, but now I felt like I was kind of wandering. Didn’t know who I was anymore, felt like I needed to do something big and bold to prove to the world that I had value. In that time, I met Bruce. Bruce became my husband and he said to me, “You know, I’ve always wanted to ride across the United States on a bicycle,” and I was thinking, “Whoa, that would be an adventure,” especially since I’ve not been on a bicycle in 40 years. And so I said, “Are you going to talk about it forever are you going to do it?” And he said, “No, I really want to do it.” I said, “Count me in.” This was long before I had decided we would get married. I was never getting married again, and so I just figured that he and I would be buds and we would do this trip. So we started training, and those first training rides were horrible. I was terrible, like I hadn’t been on a bicycle in so long, I didn’t know what I was doing. And it quickly became apparent that there was no way that I was ever going to catch up to where he was. He is an avid cyclist and he could have gone across the United States with no training, and I couldn’t get across the yard. And so he said, “What if we did it on a tandem? Then I can’t go faster than you, you can’t go slower than me. It’ll take both of us to make it.” And so that’s what we started doing is, we started training on the tandem with every intention of doing it in the summer of 2020. And then COVID happened. And we unpacked everything, decided this isn’t going to happen, but we both felt so incredibly sad about not getting to do this adventure that we started making these plans like, well, if things open up enough by this date, we could still make it. And we had made July 15th the final date, that if we couldn’t start by then, it just couldn’t happen. And we got started on like June 28th or East Coast and we flew out to Astoria, Oregon. Started there and all the way to Washington DC, 3,102 miles on a tandem across the US. So that’s kind of the backstory as to how we got to where we were going.
Gabriel: Some of the guests really identify with the name “accidental bicycle tourist,” and it seems like you could be that, because it was Bruce who encouraged you.
Teri: Exactly, like I even today don’t consider myself a cyclist. Now, other people beg to differ. They said, if you’ve ridden across the United States on a bicycle and spent three months every day riding a bicycle, you’re a cyclist. What I really am is someone who wanted an adventure, and this was the one I chose. And I still don’t feel like a confident cyclist. If anything breaks and it’s me alone, I have to push my bike and ask for help. Bruce was so aware, he was the captain. He could scan the road and see where the problems were going to be. He would see an intersection ahead and know that might be an issue or, “I see a car come in this way and I don’t like the way they’re hogging up the road.” Like, he would see all of that. I still don’t. So to me it was a very accidental kind of thing. I would have never come up with the idea on my own, but when he floated it by me, it was like, “Oh yeah! That’s it.” That would be an adventure for me.
Gabriel: Can we then talk a little bit about Bruce’s bicycling background? It sounds like he is very experienced.
Teri: Yes. So he started cycling back in middle school and he’s done a lot of races. He did his very first distance thing, he was, I think a freshman in high school and his parents let him ride from wherever it was he was living in California to Arizona to his grandparents. And he and his buddy rode and he talked about the fact that they had one of those boom boxes, so this would have been in the ’70s, maybe even in the ’60s. I guess in the ’60s. He had a boom box and they had it duct-taped to the rack on the back and had all these batteries and kept listening to their music, and that’s how they went across. And so he’s a cyclist. He loves cycling, he’s always loved it. We… I have nine bicycles in my garage, if that gives you any indication. Like, I need one.
Gabriel: Yes, I’m getting a sense now you were in good hands with Bruce at the front of the bike. You’d done some training. Probably not as much as you wanted to do.
Teri: Not as much as you need to do, and I don’t think you can ever truthfully train enough for an adventure like that, because you don’t know what you’re getting into. You just do not, and even Bruce, who didn’t need the training, there were a few times where he said, “Whoa, this is a lot harder than I would have thought it was going to be.” So even for someone who is athletic and always challenges himself and is constantly doing the big-adventure kind of things, he even had a few days that he was like, “That was a tough day.” And all I could think of when he would say that was, if it was tough for you, just imagine just imagine me.
Gabriel: Let’s talk a little bit about how you chose your route. Obviously you wanted to go coast-to-coast but why specifically Astoria to Washington?
Teri: So we were looking at the Adventure Cycling maps and initially Bruce really wanted to do the Northern Tier, partially because it’s north and it stays cooler, but as I’m looking over this Northern Tier, I recognize that we are going to go over three huge ranges, like in the first three days. And the more I looked at that, the more it was very distressing to me, because I thought this isn’t how I want to get my sea legs. Like, I don’t want to start out with something that’s this tough. I want a little more time to adjust to this whole cycling everyday thing. So we started looking at alternate routes and we ended up doing the Lewis and Clark, which kind of brought us through Oregon and into Idaho. We went over the Rocky Mountains at Lolo Pass, which is one of the lower passes over the Rockies. Now it doesn’t mean it’s low, but it’s lower, and there’s only one big pass versus over and over and over and over. Once we got over, then we headed north and got on the Northern Tier. We were on Route 2 and that took us all the way across Montana and then across North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and then we kind of went up and over into UP Michigan. And then from there we just made something up, because where we wanted to go versus where the Adventure Cycling had maps never quite coordinated. So we made up our own from that point, but at that point we were already fully 2,300, 2,400 miles into the ride. You kind of know what to look for. You can figure it out. In the beginning I’m so glad we had maps. It was really, really good to know this is what we’re going to do and this is how we’re going to do it and this is what we’re going to find along the way. So Adventure Cycling maps were fabulous.
Gabriel: Yeah, they come up in a lot of episodes.
Teri: When we got into Michigan we went around and then down and under Lake Erie, so into Ohio, and once we got to Cleveland, we kind of jigjagged into Pittsburgh, and once we got to Pittsburgh, from that point on we stayed almost entirely on bike trails versus roads. And we went on the Greater Allegheny Passage, then we went on the C&O Canal and then that brought us into DC. And I really liked the bike paths and Bruce did not.
Gabriel: Oh.
Teri: He felt like it was too easy.
Gabriel: Oh.
Teri: He needed more adventure. And for me it was a nice way to end. It was almost like a vacation, because it had been hard and then when you’re out on the bike paths, there’s so many things you don’t have to worry about. Those bike paths, they have places that are set up specifically for cycle camping they even have bed-and-breakfasts along the way, they’re specifically set up for cyclists. So it seemed very easy or I loved it and he said, “Eh, it’s very easy.”
Gabriel: Boring.
Teri: Yeah, and that’s when you can tell the two of us have very different ideas of what an adventure looks like. Because it was 2020 and COVID, we had not run into a lot of people, and now finally this is, you know, the end of September, the first of October, and there are more and more people who are now getting out and trying to do things. Yes, it’s outdoors and yes, we were kind of not all clustered up against one another, but you would talk, and it just felt really good to see people and all be doing something similar. So I liked that part a lot.
Gabriel: That’s how it ended, and it was easy but it got probably started in a difficult way, because as you said, when you start in Oregon, you’re immediately facing the Cascades.
Teri: Yes, the first day was up all day. We’d go up, up, up, up, up, up some more, and when you’re on a tandem you do not go up fast, so we’re going up pulling the trailer on a tandem. I live in North Carolina, where it had been in the 80s and the day that we left it was rainy in 55. So I was cold and wet and up, up, up, up, and then we would go flying down, only to have to make all of that up again, and go up and I… oh, I was exhausted at the end of the first day. I really thought I’d bitten off more than I could chew. I have this, I don’t even see how this could ever be fun, like I, what is this? What are we doing? But I really, really, really, really wanted to make this happen, so you kind of like buck-up and you say, we can do this. And it did get better. I got stronger, I knew what to expect. For instance, at first I hated going downhill because it was like we’re gonna have to make all that altitude up again. And then I realized I was hating going up and down so I just kind of adjusted my attitude to you know enjoy to ride for what it is. Bruce actually said to me at one point, “Teri, there’s no magic road fairy. The road is what the road is. We just have to ride what we have here.” And it was like, you know what? You’re right.
Gabriel: Where did you end your first day and did you camp?
Teri: While we were in Oregon, Oregon didn’t have any campgrounds open because of COVID, so we were staying in I call them OELs, motels but without the M and a flashing T, you know. They’re nasty little dive places.
Gabriel: Yes.
Teri: And so that’s where we were, and you know, I don’t even remember the name of the place that we stopped, but it was not as far as I thought we’d get that day.
Gabriel: Right.
Teri: I had it all planned out, I knew exactly where we were gonna get each day. I knew it all and I had this little list and I kept my list for three days and then threw it away. All the planning that I did in the kitchen did not even come close to recognizing what actually is happening out in the real world. That was also a very valuable lesson. That first day I was so tired and I did not eat enough along the way, because I didn’t feel hungry. You know, it was cold and so I didn’t eat. And we get to this little motel and Bruce orders a pizza I took a shower and I laid down in the bed afterward and could not get up again. And I was so weak and so tired, he brought the pizza over to me and I laid in bed and just turned my head to one side and shoved pizza in that way. Like, I wasn’t even trying to pick it up, I was so exhausted. So what I learned from that was, is I understood that whether I’m hungry or not, I need to continuously fuel, because I just went through everything. My whole body said, okay, that’s it. We have nothing left to give you. You are done.
Gabriel: Yeah.
Teri: And it was like well, good thing we’re at the hotel, because I don’t think I could have stayed upright on a bicycle anymore.
Gabriel: Ooof
Teri: Yeah, we were about ten days in, still in… or maybe it wasn’t even ten. We were still in Oregon and my husband, I woke up and he’s staring at me. So I said, “What?” And he said, “I think I’ve made an error in judgment.”
Gabriel: Oh oh.
Teri: And I thought, oh then we’re dead. That’s not good. Yeah. And he said, “I think we’re carrying too much stuff, and I have some things that I can send back. Is there anything you think you can send back?” Well, let me tell you, fear gets rid of a lot of stuff. So we sent back about 20 pounds of things. And about 10 days after that, he very casually said there’s a few more things I don’t think I’m going to be using. And I said, “Yeah, me too,” and we got rid of some more stuff. So before we went over the Rockies we had lightened our load, which was really really good. I’m really glad we did that.
Gabriel: Yeah, that’s one of the classic beginner mistakes, taking way too much stuff.
Teri: Yeah.
Gabriel: When you’re in the planning stage, you definitely feel like, oh I need that.
Teri: Yes, yes.
Gabriel: And once you’re on the road it’s like, oh, why did I bring this along?
Teri: Right. And the other thing is that you just think you need more. Like I had gotten my gear out and had it all laid out, and I thought that I had done a great job. Like, look at how little I’m taking for a three-month trip. This is amazing. And I didn’t need about 50 percent of it. Some of the first things that went, I thought that when we got to camp, that I would be doing all of this wonderful creative cooking. And we were going to have these delicious meals, right? And I soon learned if it couldn’t be done with one pot in 10 minutes we weren’t eating it.
Gabriel: Yeah.
Teri: And that changed a lot, so there were a lot of food cooking prep stuff that, sent that out. And the other thing is, is I think especially as a woman you know I’m wearing these big ugly padded shorts and I’m trying to look less like I have big ugly padded shorts on. So I had these cute little skirts that could go over and all of this stuff that made me look more modest and whatnot. All of that went. It was like, if you don’t want to see my padded fanny, don’t look. And so it’s really interesting. You just start going, don’t need that, don’t need that. Oh. I don’t know, I had a little – and it was little it’s not like it was a big thing – but it was a hammock, you know, that you could sling out. No. Once you get the tent up and you’re ready for bed, you get in the bed and you go to sleep. You’re not putting up a hammock for the evening. It’s different than when you go camping and you’re in a camping spot for a week. Well sure, put up your hammock. But you’re only going to be there for the evening? And then you’re going to put the hammock up and take the hammock down and put the hammock up? No, you are not. You’re never getting it out.
Gabriel: That’s closer to the gadgets that I was talking about. You’re at the store and you go, “Oh, a hammock.”
Teri: A hammock.
Gabriel: We can relax in the evening with a cocktail and that’s going to be amazing.
Teri: And it’s like, no.
Gabriel: “Get the tent up I’m going to bed!”
Teri: Yeah, seriously. It’s like, “Okay, we ate. Is there anything else that needs doing? The clothes that we washed out by hand in the sink are hanging? Right, okay. Good night.” I know the sun is still up, but it’s okay. We’re going to bed now, yeah.
Gabriel: Awesome. I guess you were able to camp in other states.
Teri: Yes. Oregon was closed. Every other state that we went to, the campgrounds were open, so unless we were in a space that there wasn’t a campground available, because sometimes you’re places there’s just no campground nearby, we generally stayed in a campground. First of all, it’s cheaper. My husband really liked to camp too, so I think that was part of it. Camping meant, I don’t know, I felt like we had a little more freedom. It was COVID and so if you were in the hotel, you couldn’t really leave your room, right? Because you’re indoors but when you’re at the campground, people who are out in the campground, sure you didn’t get right up in their face but you could chat with other campers and you just felt more normal than what we were feeling during that first summer of COVID. And so I really liked the camping experience, except for the couple of nights where we didn’t sleep well, but you know you can have those in a hotel too.
Gabriel: Yeah. Did you have any mechanical issues at all during your ride?
Teri: Yeah, we had a couple of different things that happened. One Bruce didn’t know how to fix. We had this horrible clunking noise. It just kept clunking and clunking. We went to one shop, they didn’t have the part that they could fix it with. They kind of band-aided it for us, called in the part to a shop the next couple of towns over, where we knew we would be headed next. And so when we got there, the part was there and we were able to get it fixed there. So we had that happen. The general flat tire things that go on. At one point, and Bruce didn’t realize it because he’s on the front, I’m on the back and my seat had lowered and I started getting horrible shin splint feelings in my calves. And I couldn’t figure out what was going on and someone else said to Bruce, I guess they saw us go by and said to Bruce, “I think her seat’s too low.” And they snapped a picture and showed it to him and he was like, “Oh my gosh. How have you been riding like that?” Well, I’m not a cyclist. Do you know what I’m saying? Like, I didn’t realize, and so he pulled my seat back up to where it was supposed to be and then all the shin splints went away.
Gabriel: Your seat slowly lowered over time.
Teri: Yes. It’s not like it was at a space and then oof it fell down three inches.
Gabriel: Right. You would have noticed then.
Teri: Right. But it was just this little bit at a time, and because he’s always on the bicycle and then I get on, it’s not like he was ever able to look and see. So I learned a lot more about like what my space was supposed to feel like, so even if I don’t know how to fix it, I can at least say to someone, this is too low, this doesn’t feel right when I do whatever. One day we were riding and all of a sudden my pedal fell off.
Gabriel: Oh, gosh.
Teri: It just fell off and I yelled to Bruce, “My pedal fell off.” And he said “What?” So we had to stop and then he walked, oh, probably a hundred yards looking for all the pieces, little bolts and things. And he found everything and got it back together again, but yeah it was, I don’t even know how that could have happened. Like, how does that happen?
Gabriel: Good question.
Teri: So he thinks what happened was we had just had it in to fix whatever that piece was that I can’t remember the name of.
Gabriel: Where on the bike was this part?
Teri: So there’s two chains in the tandem. It was a piece between those two chains, so it was down under me, where I’m sitting.
Gabriel: Oh, it was on your cranks?
Teri: Yes, they had to pull my cranks off to get to it.
Gabriel: Yeah, that’s the bottom bracket then.
Teri: Yes. They had taken things apart and put things back and he thinks that whoever put it back was the new guy who didn’t really know what he was doing and that he somehow did something wrong. That’s all he can assume was something. But the whole pedal fell off. He said, “That’s not even possible.” And it’s like, “Well, it might not be possible, but I don’t have a pedal on my right side. Sorry.”
Gabriel: I guess you weren’t riding with clipless.
Teri: Yeah, so we were riding without clips, thank goodness. I fell, actually, when we were training, and I broke my arm because we were clipped in and I could not get my feet out fast enough, because I was still too new. And as we fell I hit my elbow, broke my elbow completely off the bone. It flipped upside down and I had to have surgery and a titanium elbow put in.
Gabriel: No way!
Teri: Yeah, so from that point it took me two or three months to even consider getting back on the bicycle again, and then I wouldn’t do anything other than have regular shoes and nothing even over my toes. And eventually Bruce talked me into having the little guards that went over my toes.
Gabriel: Right.
Teri: But it took me months, because there was that idea that I’m going to get trapped again. Because we were going over, and I knew we were going over, and Bruce was able to get his feet out, and he’s trying to hold the bike up but I’m on it, you know, and over we went and I did my best to get out of the way, but I just hit my elbow and you know that was that. The clipped shoes scare me but once again I’m not a cyclist.
Gabriel: It is a rite of passage to fall when you’re first learning, but you had really bad luck. It’s not a rite of passage to break your arm and have a titanium implant.
Teri: No. I’m 62 years old. It’s the only bone I’ve ever broken.
Gabriel: This actually gives you even more credit because you didn’t just say forget this. It took you a while but you stuck with it.
Teri: Well, first of all, the first couple of rides, I had trouble just, because I’m still doing PT and I could only lean forward on that handlebar for so long before that arm started giving out, you know. So we couldn’t go too far and we had to, I had to take a lot of rests and I had to find different ways to hold the handlebar at first, just trying to make it so I could do it, and then I was like I said terrified to have my feet in anything. Finally one day in the neighborhood Bruce, had put those cages on but I was riding the bike with the cages upside down. Like. I won’t have them, right? And we were in our neighborhood, probably half a mile from the driveway and I said, “Okay. I want you to level the pedals and I’m gonna put my feet into the cages.” With my toes I flipped the pedals over and we went that half a mile, and the whole time, I mean, I can still feel it. I was shaking. I was just shaking but it was like, okay, I did it. And then every time we went out after that I would pick a mile or two that I would say I feel comfortable trying to put my feet in here. It’s not a lot of traffic, we’re not going up hills, like, it’s straight. I can see where we’re going and I slowly got myself comfortable with, I can get my feet out of these cages without a problem. We had only been training a couple of months when I broke my arm, so I was still so new.
Gabriel: That’s a pretty big setback, but again you overcame it, which is awesome.
Teri: Yeah.
Gabriel: One quick question. Did you happen to go through Rugby, North Dakota?
Teri: Yes, we did. Rugby, North Dakota, is the what? Geographical center of North America?
Gabriel: That’s right.
Teri: As you’re going across the United States, you don’t say to yourself, “Oooh, let’s stop in Rugby.”
Gabriel: Right.
Teri: Do you know what I mean?
Gabriel: Exactly. It’s not the kind of place where you’ll be in Idaho and you’re like, “Only 2,000 miles to Rugby!”
Teri: Right. No. It’s nothing. It’s hardly a crossroads it’s got a hotel and a restaurant that’s attached and it has the Dairy Queen and I think probably a Dollar General, because every place does, and maybe a laundromat, and that’s it. There’s just nothing. And yet, you’re looking at the map going, we’re about to go through the center of North America. Bruce is like, “What?” I said, “Yeah, it says right here. Rugby. That’s where we’re headed.” Bruce said, “I think that’s where we’ll probably spend the night.” It was like, pretty cool. Like, we stopped and had our picture made with the cute little place in the middle.
Gabriel: That’s always so much fun, to discover these kinds of places and of course nowadays you can Google everything and check the ratings and so forth, so it takes away a little bit of the serendipity but it’s stil fun to discover these places. That’s one of the nice things in the US you have so many quirky eateries and attractions.
Teri: Yes. Once again, it’s COVID and a lot of things weren’t open. You ate where you found food. Sometimes you’d get to a little town that was supposed to have a restaurant and there’s nothing in the town open.
Gabriel: Right.
Teri: So you didn’t pass a restaurant. Like if you’d solve one open you went ahead and did that. We used Dollar General a lot. Dollar General was where you could stop because there you could get anything to make the trail mix, you know. Do I would buy maybe some raisins and some craisins and some chocolate chips and some nuts and we’d pour them into the baggie and shake and then you’d have that. And worst-case scenario the Dollar Generals are everywhere. Dven in places where almost everything is closed you could at least get bread and peanut butter. We had planned to use WarmShowers. Do you know that one?
Gabriel: Sure.
Teri: Yeah, so we’d planned to do that, because we live on the East Coast and we live right on the eastern… there’s a route that goes from Florida up to Maine, and we had hosted many, many, many people.
Gabriel: Oh, okay. You’re hosts.
Teri: Yeah, it had built up a nice reputation for ourselves so that when we went out, people would see that we host and that. And then we went out during COVID and there isn’t a soul in the world who’s going to let strangers into their house, especially at the point that we’re riding, because you figure at the point like they don’t know much about how it’s being transmitted yet and they’re still, you’re like everybody’s still terrified no way are people letting you into their house. So it just changed a lot of how we had anticipated going across the US. we thought we would do WarmShowers probably 60% of the way and it turned out that we couldn’t.
Gabriel: It just makes me think, of course, one of the guidelines of bicycle touring is eat if you get the opportunity…
Teri: Right.
Gabriel: Because you never know what’ll happen. Get water if you have a chance.
Teri: Exactly.
Gabriel: Doing it in COVID times, it adds a whole another layer to that.
Teri: It actually did, and I got sick. I got a bug. Have you heard of giardia?
Gabriel: Sure. Lives in lakes and rivers and you get it if you drink water that’s not filtered.
Teri: Well, my husband has an iron stomach. He spent 25 years in the military. I really do think that when you have been exposed to numbers of things that your body just knows how to fight it. He just fought it off. I mean, whatever it was, yeah, his body said, no, you don’t get to live here, and my body was like, come on in, you know. We were at a park and they had turned off all of the water and we needed water, and Bruce had a wrench, and he went over to this building and he opened up the water and we filled it. But we didn’t let the water run first which is what we should have done. We actually were a little concerned that we were going to get caught, because I’m sure they turned the water off for a reason and we’re essentially stealing their water. And so we just were very quick about it and then moved ourselves on. and i felt bad for a couple of days and then i just kept getting worse and that’s when we called the doctor explain what was going on told him what I thought it was. I said I’m pretty sure this is what I have. They agreed, said they could call in a prescription. I looked at the the map and it was like, okay, we’re like nine miles from where we’re planning to stop today. Call it into there, and then we stayed there for two days. So instead of just staying the night, we stayed two nights, and gave me a chance to get the medicine in me. And really within about 24 hours of getting the medication, I don’t feel fantastic but I’m feeling so much better. By four or five days you’re fine. Yeah, it was like of course, who on this bicycle trip is going to get giardia? Me.
Gabriel: Good thing you recovered quickly from that.
Teri: I felt really bad. Like, we had to get to a pharmacy, and nine miles doesn’t seem far if you have a car, but nine miles is a pretty good distance when you’re having to go on the back of a bicycle and you have giardia. So yeah.
Gabriel: Yeah, it’s all relative.
Teri: Yes, it is very much. Going anywhere by bicycle, if you’ll open your eyes you get to see a lot of things that just go flying by when you’re in a car, that you wouldn’t see and you wouldn’t notice. We got to see some beautiful, beautiful things. One night in Montana we wake up and he says, “You’ve got to come out and see this.” They call Montana “Big Sky Country” for a reason. I mean, it is unbelievable. And we were not in the mountains but we were kind of up, and it was a clear, clear, clear, clear night and it was crisp, it was cool, and it looked like you could pull the Milky Way down out of the sky. It looked like cotton that you could touch it. It was right there. And the comet Neowise was going through at that time and you could just see it just with this big long tail. It was just unbelievable. I’ll have that picture in my mind for the rest of my life. We had horses run with us one day. We’re going alongside their enclosure and now they’re running with us and it was just like, you couldn’t pay to have that experience. Doing things like this lets you see the world in a way that you don’t see it traveling any other way.
Gabriel: Beautiful. How did it feel for you when you got to Washington DC? What emotions were going through your mind?
Teri: Right. Well for me initially it was hard to believe that we’d done it, because – and you know this – you don’t ride from Oregon to Washington DC. You ride Tuesday and then you ride Wednesday and then you ride Thursday. When you’re done, you’ve ridden all that way. In my mind, it’s like I knew that’s what we were doing but I would look at the map and it was like, how did we do that? But the other thing for me, you know, I had been in this horrible relationship, I didn’t really believe in myself anymore, we decided to go on this trip and at the end of the trip I said, you know what? I can do anything. I just rode across the United States on a tandem. It isn’t a matter of can I do it but what do I want to do? And that’s why I decided I wanted to be an author. And it’s something that I had been flirting with but didn’t believe that I would ever be able to accomplish. And 14 months after we got back from that trip, my first book was published.
Gabriel: And what was your first book about?
Teri: So it was called Sunflowers Beneath the Snow, and it’s three generations of Ukrainian women, and it’s crazy, the book came out one month before the current Ukrainian crisis, so it’s not like I knew. I have a friend who’s Ukrainian who told me a true story of something that happened to her. And it was just a little short tidbit, and so I made up 82,000 words to explain how that could have ever come to be. I’ve written a book a year since then, so every spring I have a new book that comes out, and all of that because of this bicycle ride. If I can ride across the United States on a bicycle, I certainly can sit at a computer and write a book.
Gabriel: Well, this is a life-changing journey for you.
Teri: Yeah. You know, everyone it has those moments in their life where they can point to certain things and say this really turned things for me, and this is definitely one of those.
Gabriel: From the poster behind you, it’s clear you’ve written a book about your journey and yeah, I love this title: The 10 Little Rules for a Double-Butted Adventure.
Teri: So I kept a blog the whole way and every evening before we’d crawl into bed, I would write up how many miles we went, what the weather was like, how our bike did, how I was feeling. I just wrote it all down. And because it was COVID we had quite a few people reading and following, right? They didn’t have anything better to do with their life. And I called it Double-Butted Adventures. What is interesting is, is when I gave that idea to my husband before we left and I said Double-Butted Adventures, he said, “Oh, double-butted like double-butted steel,” I said, “What are you talking about?”
Gabriel: What? You didn’t…
Teri: Because I meant double-butted, like two butts, double butts, and he said, “Well, yeah, they use double-butting to put together a tandem bicycle, because in order to make the tubes…” and he goes on and on. Well, he’s an engineer and I’m a writer, and so I loved using Double-Butted Adventure because it fit both of us,
Gabriel: Right, and I can’t believe that that wasn’t the intent from the beginning.
Teri: Of course, you know double-butted steel but the number of people that I talk to that have no idea, just like me. That’s actually one of my rules, is this idea that you can come at the same thing from different places. There’s more than one way to do something, to see something, to be something. People argue about everything. We argue about whether or not pineapple belongs on pizza and people get angry and they have a feeling about this. And my feeling is is just order the pizza with half pineapple, like you know, and so that’s one of my rules is this idea that we need to be a little more open-minded and see things from other people’s perspectives and be okay with that. Like, it’s fine you don’t have to love it, you don’t even have to understand it. Just know that not everybody sees everything the same.
Gabriel: It’s something that’s come up in the podcast. In this day and age there’s a lot of polarization.
Teri: In today’s world it almost feels like if someone doesn’t agree with you a thousand percent, then you can’t be friends anymore.
Gabriel: Yeah, but then nobody will have any friends.
Teri: Exactly. That’s my point is, is you know if you keep doing this you’re going to narrow it down to the point that, who are you going to be able to talk to? No one. And for us on the bicycle, we learned, you know you thought you were going to do it this way. We’re following the map, this is the way we’re going. You get to a particular place and you find out that they’ve torn up the next 10 miles of road and it’s down to the dirtbed and they have a truck going back and forth watering the dirt to keep the dust down. We’re not going across that on a tandem bicycle. We’re not equipped. Our tires aren’t equipped for this, this is not what we’re going to do. So you have to make a new plan and it doesn’t mean that the old plan was a bad plan it just means that it isn’t going to work this time, you know. And you have to be able to say, okay, well, let’s open up our mind to something else. What are we going to do instead?
Gabriel: It sounds like maybe these rules are more for life.
Teri: I call them life lessons. Most of my stories are very related to this bicycle, but they’re more about life because I feel like I learned about myself and other people and the way the world works while on this journey. You know, there’s one lesson in there, it’s called “don’t quit on a bad day.” And we had a horrible day. We were going into Glasgow, Montana. From where we had spent the night to where we were going was 70 miles, and there was nothing in between. And so we had to go 70 miles, and that day the rear tire went flat three times so you have to take everything off to get to the rear tire… it was just… And it was hot, even though we were as far north as we were, this particular day was hot. The wind, which normally blows from west to east, was not it was blowing directly in our face, and so we were having to push twice as hard to get half as far. I mean, it was just a bad, bad day. And we got to the end of that day, we stayed in this cheap little motel that only had smoking rooms, so if that gives you any indication of what kind of place. We couldn’t go any further. This is it. At least it has a bed and a shower and had a little restaurant across the street. And it was like, good, this is as far as we can go. And I put out on the blog that day, “I think I’m done. You know, we’ve made it over the Rockies, we’ve made it as far as we’ve made it. I’m not having fun anymore. This is bad. I think that we’re just going to call it. I can’t imagine doing this another two months. Like, this is not fun.” And I had a friend reach out to me, and she said, “You know, what you’ve done is amazing, and if you quit today you don’t have to hang your head. How many people do you know who rode over the Rocky Mountains on a tandem bicycle? You’re amazing. However, I highly recommend that you don’t quit on a bad day, because you’ll always wonder if you could have made it. So if you can take a break, try to make tomorrow a lighter day. Give yourself a little time to get over the really bad day and see what happens.” And I took that advice to heart. The next day was a fabulous day. It was a short day, first of all. The wind was at our back, blew us into town. By 10:30 in the morning, we were done riding for the day. We ate second breakfast, we stayed in a hotel that night, that was a nice one. We slept all afternoon, got up and ate dinner, and slept all night. And by the next day when the wind went back to being the wrong direction, I felt strong, I had had a good sleep, we had had good food, and we made it all the way across. And so that’s one of my rules, is don’t quit on a bad day. And it doesn’t mean don’t quit, because sometimes quitting is the answer. Like, when I got out of that really horrible relationship, I needed to get out of that. When something is no longer serving you, I think quitting is absolutely an okay thing to do, but don’t quit when you’re angry, and don’t quit when you’re tired, and don’t quit when you’re hungry, because when those things are happening, you’re not thinking through. You’re not able to weigh options, because the emotions are too big. So I really like that idea of pulling away and giving yourself space and saying something like, I feel like quitting today but I’m going to wait until Friday to reevaluate, and see where I am on Friday. And then if on Friday you still feel like quitting, now maybe sit down and make the charts that say pros and cons and whatnot. But don’t try to do it when you’ve had a 70-mile day with three flat tires. Everybody would want to quit. Even my husband was ready to quit on that day.
Gabriel: Yeah, that’s a good one. Of course there are going to be those days. You can’t have only amazing days on such a long ride.
Teri: Right. Absolutely, and you can’t plan when they’re going to happen either. So it’s not like you can say, okay well, we’ve had a good night’s sleep. Today would be a good day to have a bad day. We can handle it today. That’s not when they happen, you know. They just happen when they happen, and unfortunately for us, that particular bad day happened on one of the longer days that we had to go that far.
Gabriel: Right.
Teri: We went further than 70 miles two different times beyond that, but both those days were great days where the wind was behind us and it was literally pushing us, and it just felt fabulous to keep going. But no, on this day we had no choice. Unfortunately, when the tire went flat, Bruce fixed it with a patch, but the patch didn’t hold. I think the the glue wasn’t good. And so he fixed it again, but once again and, oh god it was just… when we got to Glasgow, there was a bike shop. Called the bike shop and asked if they had what he needed and they said yes, and they said, you know, where are you? And we told him and they said, “Good, you’re just three miles down the road. And Bruce said, “I don’t have three miles in me. Is there any way, like, I’ll pay you to deliver it.” And the guy was like, “You know what? I’m getting ready to leave work and I come right by there. I’ll just drop it off.” And he came by with the things that Bruce had paid for. And I could have kissed him. The summer of terms of the country. There was a lot of political upheaval, there were a lot of people burning things, COVID was running through, it was not a good year. And if you listened to the news you would think that the entire nation was going to hell in a hand basket. What we found were wonderful beautiful, genuine, loving, giving people the whole way across the United States. And I’m not saying bad people don’t exist. I know they do. But in general, I think people are pretty good. They want the same things that everyone wants. They want love and they want to be able to pay their bills and they want happiness. Restored my faith in humanity.
Gabriel: Oh, that’s good.
Teri: My Ten Little Rules for a Double-Butted Adventure is essentially, how can you live a little more adventurously? How can you get outside of the box? You know, we all put ourselves in a nice, neat box, because it’s comfortable there and we don’t have to try too hard and we know how our day is going to go, but when we’re in the nice little neat box, we’re not growing or learning or becoming anything. We are just stationary bicycles, just doing nothing. I made a decision of… I think that you know that my husband passed away. So he developed brain cancer in June of ’22 and he passed away January of last year and I’ve always had a bucket list. I’ve always had this list of things, and I decided that between the ride and his passing, hate bucket lists. I don’t think we should have a bucket list. I think we should have a do-it-now list, so I tell people all the time, throw your bucket list away. Instead find one thing that you really, really want and start working toward it. Do it today. Do something toward it every day. Eventually, you’re going to get to that goal. Whatever that is, whether it’s write a book or ride your bicycle across the United States or travel to whatever country or whatever it is, if it’s something that means something to you, don’t wait, don’t put it on the list. Go ahead and do it. Find a way to make it happen. And it might not look exactly like you thought it would. I’m a little older and this will be tough. Okay. When we rode across the United States, I was 56, Bruce was 66. Did it look like it would have looked if he had done it when he was 20? No, it did not, but we did it. Don’t wait for whatever that elusive thing is that you’re waiting for. More time, more money, when the kids grow up, when you retire, when, when, when, when, if, if, if, if, because the truth is, is you don’t know that you’ll get those things. When I leave this world, whenever that happens to be, I hope that I’m working on something. I want to leave the world working toward something, instead of having a list of things I wish I had accomplished.
Gabriel: The transcript for this episode is available on The Accidental Bicycle Tourist website. I welcome feedback and suggestions for this and other episodes. You’ll find a link to all contact information in the show notes. If you would like to rate or review the show, you can do that on your favorite podcast platform. You can also follow the podcast on Instagram. Thank you to Anna Lindenmeier for the cover artwork and to Timothy Shortell for the original music. This podcast would not be possible without continuous support from my wife, Sandra. And thank you so much for listening. I hope the episode will inspire you to get out and see where the road leads you.
Gabriel: Is that only in black and white or also in color?
Cyndy: Yeah, we didn’t have color back in those days. That was 1972.
Gabriel: Come on. There was color, there was in 1972.
Teri: I get a news aggravator – not aggravator, aggregator – every morning. It is an aggravator as well.